The Princess and the Frog

Even when the 86-year-old media conglomerate tries to right decades of stereotypes in its animated movies, Disney can still manage to miss the mark. The Dec. 11 nationwide release of The Princess and the Frog marks the first time Disney portrays an African-American heroine on the big screen — about time. Still, the film has not escaped controversy. While studio execs agreed to use a more ethnic-sounding name (“Tiana,” instead of the originally scripted “Maddy”) and make her the head chef for an affluent white family (rather than her original job as a maid), critics had a few doubts. Why was Tiana’s prince given an ambiguous name and suspiciously light skin? Why set the film in New Orleans, home to a largely black community still reeling from Hurricane Katrina? What’s with the voodoo theme? In the end, however, the film has garnered some positive reviews: “Going into this movie, I thought the princesses in pop culture, especially Disney princesses, could exist only in stories in which helpless young women are saved by handsome young men,” Washington Post columnist Sara Sarasohn wrote about seeing the movie with her young daughter. “But Tiana is the princess I didn’t know I had been waiting for my whole life.”

Being black I do not see a single issue with Princess and the Frog and actually it is one of my favorite movies being able to somewhat relate to the mannerism and culture showcased in the movie. On top of that, all my black friends (male and female) love the movie as well, so I do not understand how there are people still not happy that Disney finally made an African-American princess embraced in her Louisianan life style and on top of that as independent as ever by wanting to own her own restaurant.